Little Voices: Pages 28-37

Geez, I let this one go too long. Updating the blog has been a little more difficult lately, due to work.

I had all sorts of issues with the last panel of Page 28-- mostly, I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. Early lines included Joey talking about his father (out of character) and Yugi and Joey teasing Kaiba about having been adopted again (addressed in a later scene.) I only hit on the "talking nonsense" line after doing the bonus art mentioned in the last commentary. Kaiba muttering deliriously fixes everything in fanfic.

No, really, it does. Next time you can't figure out where your story's going, just get the man drunk. He will show you the way.

Page 29 is basically just a wrap up of the scene, but it still amuses me horribly. I love those little Calvin and Hobbes style chases, and I don't get to do them often in enough in serious storylines. (Also I got to draw Kaiba snoozing some more, echoing the first page in the sequence. I was pretty happy with that.)

As mentioned on the page, the random bystander lady belongs to My-Oh-Mai, one of our longtime readers who contributed to the open invite I keep mentioning.

I've mentioned in the original comments for page 30 that I love Duke. I say that about a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh characters. This is because it's true. XD

Duke is one of those characters that I draw consistently off-model, mainly because his hair didn't make much sense in the series (Hah, hair making sense in this fandom. Right.) When I talk about a character's hair not making sense, mostly I mean things like the fact that Duke's headband doesn't seem to circle around his head, instead terminating behind his bangs (without even a string to hold it up) and the fact that you really just can't tell where Téa's bangs start or where the part of her hair begins.

Other than that, I like drawing Duke because he dresses in a semi-girlish way-- not unlike the way that I dress, to be honest. (Although I seem to trend toward Atem's jewelry tastes.) This makes him easy for me to dress while keeping his outfits interesting, so drawing him is actually pretty relaxing. (It helps that he has a pretty ponytail. I love drawing hair.)

Tristan's nephew right there appeared in the manga. I like the fact that Tristan has a nephew, and that he gets pressed into watching the kid; it adds a dimension of harrassed younger brother to him that I identify with and am entertained greatly by. I gave Johji some aging up for the simple fact that time has passed and babies grow quickly; Johji will probably make more appearances, and he will look different every time.

Also I totally drew a picture of freaky baby Johji when I was prepping for that page. It makes me feel mildly dirty. XD

As noted pretty much everywhere I've mentioned her so far, Amber, making her introduction on page 31, belongs to SK Dark Dragon, who I asked for permission to use the character some time ago. We used to hang out in the same Yugioh forum back when TV.com was TVTome, and she hosted some of my early fanart on her website before I was allowed to have a DeviantArt account. I became very fond of Amber after reading several stories that featured the character, and asked if I could write a version of her into the future story I was concocting. Obviously, she said yes. (But I asked her again a year or two ago, because we hadn't talked in a while. XD SK still said yes.) (SK now has a blog on BlogSpot, and as she says herself, usually calls herself Little Scarf Girl now.)

Anyway, I liked Amber enough to let Duke chase her around in Game of Dreams. There is some amount of canon that indicates that Duke isn't entirely straight, but anybody who's read The Law of Purple knows I don't give half a damn about that kind of thing. XD Not being entirely straight doesn't disprove any hetero tendencies. (Incedentally, the LOP character Lette was very mildly inspired by SK, although they're absolutely nothing like each other and Lette isn't actually based on her. It's complex.)

Sometimes, YnY being a slightly disjointed online comic requires a scene to wrap quickly. I usually go for humor when this happens.

Also, I was very gratified by the positive response to Amber. Often when you introduce a recurring non-canon character into fanfic, a lot of acid is spat. (And let's be frank, a full-body shot is like the equivilant to a Mary-Sue description page in comics sometimes.) I'm sure it helps that she's not actually mine. XD

Some people were a little confused by Bakura's soul room on page 32. At least one person who was confused by it seemed to have never read the manga; this is where I got a lot of my ideas on what a proper soul room should look like. Téa's, for example, used a dance studio as a starting point, with lots of mirrors to indicate a confident personality, and an open ceiling to indicate an open personality. There was a cute little love seat and a tree in the middle of the floor, and a framed picture of a superhero without a face, which represented Atem (she didn't know who he was at the time.) There was also a portrait of the Statue of Liberty holding a ballet shoe and a soft drink cup. XD Another character, who spent a lot of time with himself and concentrating on ancient knowledge, had a dark soul room which used a library as a starting point.

Ryou's soul room started as a combination between a medieval courtyard and a Japanese garden, to represent, among other things, his love of the fantastic (as manga readers and those familiar with Series 0 will know, he likes to make his own tabletop RPGs.) On the wall directly opposite the viewer is a window hidden by a curtain and obscured by willow trees; behind this shroud is a portrait of his mother and sister, who died prior to the series. Though I doubt we'll ever see the portrait, his sister is slightly more prominent in the image, because he wrote letters to her in the manga, which indicates to me that he took her loss harder than that of his mother.

To the left of the portrait, from our viewpoint, is another arch. In this arch, which is uncovered, you can see a portrait of Yugi, Téa, Tristan and Joey, although the distance involved makes it a smallish picture and therefore obscures exactly who is represented there. These four people are the only friends that Ryou has had that have not abandoned him or rejected him outright when they learned that he was possessed, and who went to great lengths to help him even when they didn't know him that well. Therefore he holds them in a place of great importance, and they get to have a picture in his soul room.

Even more prominent is the statue to the left of that, whose feet can be seen in the side of the panel. This is Atem, who he's given a Theban style monument in his head. I refuse to go very deeply into that, aside from the fact that it started in the same place as the portrait of Yugi-tachi. (I did mention elsewhere that there were going to be undertones of this.)

Somewhere in the soul room, where we cannot see, there is probably a smaller image of his father, whom he doesn't seem to be especially close to. This is understandable, because Ryou's father would appear to be out of the country a lot. On the opposite wall from the viewer, there is another window, but it looks "out."

The pool in the floor handles several jobs. First of all, it represents a deeper emotional and spiritual side to Ryou that he keeps private. Secondly, it divides his soul room into two parts: the "lighter" side, with Atem, his friends, and his father (and his sister and mother hovering in between) and the "darker" side, which features more trees, some ivy on the wall....

And a screen door, which leads us into page 33, and Ryou into a blank room. The screen door was Invid's idea. As anyone who is into this fandom knows, when Atem and Yugi's soul rooms were depicted, we never saw inside Yugi's (except for a few toys scattered on the floor), but there was a hallway dividing the two rooms, and the hallway itself resembled Atem's room more than it did Yugi's (Although Yugi's door had something that looked like metal plating and circuitry on it. Which is awesome.) Invid postulated that this hallway represented the fact that Atem's soul room actually existed within the Millenium Puzzle, and thus if Atem had actually fully inhabited Yugi's body, it would have looked different.

Hence the screen door. Yami Bakura's blank soul room is actually directly a part of Ryou's room, but their souls remain distinct; Yami B is just hiding out in Ryou's head. Since it's a single vessel containing two souls, there's only one soul room, but it's been divided into two by a screen door so as to represent the separation of the actual personalities.

Yami Bakura is currently in a very bad way, as the blankness of his side should indicate. Consider: if everything in Ryou's room means something, and the Escheresque maze in Atem's soul room represented hidden secrets, what does blankness mean? Marik will get to show up later and explain a bit of this to us, and to Ryou.

I was aware that having Yami Bakura turn out to be alive might put certain readers off. I can only say that I had several good reasons for doing it; which can be summed up like so: There is a starting point from the series for this that makes it possible (the fact that several times he shunted part of his own soul into objects other than the Ring.) I like him and want to see him heal. And he plays an important role in later stories, a role that only Yami Bakura can play. (Also Yukai likes him a great deal. I'm not sure why, because Yukai actually has to have a human relationship with him, and I don't, but there you go. They have some weird things in common with each other, and they're both snarky. Maybe that's enough.)

Ryou maybe loses some of those manly points he's been racking up on page 34. I have to admit I kind of giggle when he drops Yami B, even though it's horrible. Mostly he didn't expect Yami B to flop like that, but he's also startled that Yami B doesn't seem to be a figment of his imagination. I dressed Yami B in darker clothes than Ryou to make it simpler to tell them apart. As time goes by, I'll be using varied methods, like shadow scars, actual scars, shadows over the eyes, mascara, and context. I try to draw Yami B's little hair horns that started to show up in Battle City, but somehow that doesn't make them look different enough when I'm the one drawing them.

Do notice that on Yami B's side of the soul room, the screen door appears to be just floating there. XD Aside from that, I am very pleased with Yami B's hair, and the way he looks as Ryou is dropping him. The dropping pose came about in a very natural way and I'm not sure how I did it.

Yami Bakura wants you to help him, Roooo! He is bleeding spiritually! Augghhh!

I don't really have anything else to say about page 35, because I said most of it in the comments. XD

Page 36 features that nice statue of Atem. I'm very pleased with how it turned out, although it seemed to confuse at least one person into thinking Atem was alive in Ryou's head too. O_o He's not. That would be weird. And also he'd be like "Bakura, I don't want that half dead guy on my feet, put him back." Other than that, I'm happy with the progression of the page, and stuff.

On page 37, Ryou once again references time. I may as well mention here that the next storyline is another half a year later, but that it takes three months, and that the next two storylines coexist over a time period of about a year. I'm mildly shaky on exact time within the actual series, but have chosen to assume it covers a time period of maybe a year to a year and a half. The end of the last story will be about seven years after the Ceremonial Duel. :P

Ryou moves Yami B from the "dark" side of his room to the "light" side of his room and puts him at Atem's feet. Make of that what you will.

Let it be known that I have no intention of reviving Atem in the same way. He's conclusively dead. He has every reason to rest in peace. Bringing him back would destroy the point of the series ending, which is "death must be accepted." Yami B's problem is partly an inability to take the moral to heart.

(Despite this, Atem manages to be very present throughout Game of Dreams, as the statue itself indicates.)

This page was the result of a lot of last minute editing, and it was mostly because I suddenly realized I had never made it clear, anywhere in the storyline, that Yami B has amnesia. I'm not sure how that happened, but I like the page.

This situation is not permanent, but won't be changed during Game of Dreams, because it's partly thanks to Yukai that the change happens. There, ya'll have your spoiler for the day. XD

Next up, Ryou goes looking for answers!

Character Study: Tristan

Character Study: Tristan Taylor

Approximate Age: (by the Japanese anime) Fifteen to seventeen
Character Archetype: The Pinch Hitter, the straight man (As in comedy, not as in sexuality. :P)
Probable Element and Alignment: Earth, Lawful Good
Most Obvious Vocal Quirks: Sort of a "cool tough guy" lilt.

Poor Tristan. Poooor, poor Tristan. When he's not being ignored, he's being made fun of for being boring. They really could have put more about the poor guy in the DM anime; he has more backstory than Téa does.

For example, we know (mostly from the manga) that he has an older sister, who married a guy with a motorcycle, and that their son, Johji, is already a disturbing little pervert before he can walk. We also know that Tristan's sister probably picks on him, because he was apparently bullied into watching said nephew. His brother-in-law apparently trusts him enough to let him borrow said motorcycle, indicating that he's pretty trustworthy.

We know that Tristan has a dog and that apparently he never thought to get her spayed. We know that he's a fairly sensible guy who doesn't see the point to overly expensive shoes just because they're the cool thing. We know that he used to look up to Joey and that he apparently used to hate himself before he really became friends with Yugi, at one point telling Yugi he didn't want him to fight gang members "because even though you're my friend, I don't want you falling to my level." Like with everyone else, Yugi was a good influence on him.

We know that he tends to like shy girls (because the other girl he's crushed on is Miho, who in her appearance in the manga never is seen directly face on, only from the side) and we know that he's usually ready to get caught up in Joey's enthusiasm when it involves either fighting or flipping skirts. We know that he's a crack shot, and that he likes Westerns.

From the anime, we know that he's always ready to step up when no one else is there, that he's got a better sense of how to carry a souless shell than Kaiba does (Fireman's carry, Kaiba, not bridestyle! XD) that he's a bit more skeptical than Yugi, Joey OR Téa as well as a bit more realistic, and that he's willing to lie his head off to impress a pretty girl (Serenity.) We also know he's about as shameless as Duke.

Just by looking at him, we know that he's the kind of guy to get a crew cut. Because I'm fairly sure that's what that's supposed to be. ^_^''

(I've heard SOMEWHERE he wants to be a pilot someday, but I know not where I heard that, and he apparently doesn't mention what KIND of pilot, of which there are many.)

Point is, we know a lot about this guy, and he presents himself as pretty likeable, when he's not chasing after redheads. The thing about Tristan is that he's a fairly believable, ordinary kid. Aside from everything else I've listed, he's probably from a family that's comfortably middle-class, because his clothing is always neat and looks like his mother picked it out to make him look handsome. His family life is probably boringly stable, and so it's possible he got caught up with Joey more because of Joey's charisma and his own boredom than because of any dramatic strife in his own life.

All of Tristan's major flaws come out more strongly when he's crushing on someone than at any other time. I've mentioned he seems to crush on shy girls (obviously this isn't as true in Season 0, but I don't count it in my canon because Season 0 was totally insane.) I suspect this is because Tristan is essentially looking for someone to protect. But if there's anyone I tend to feel should try to date outside his own type...

In order to impress Serenity, Tristan puffs himself up by lying about his own abilities as a duelist. As I've mentioned, he's already got plenty of good qualities, and if he was just himself Serenity would probably be plenty and appropriately impressed with him. But for whatever reason, Tristan decides being a crack shot and a pretty sensible guy aren't good enough for this girl. Perhaps he's been luckless enough in love that he feels the need to lie, or maybe he's decided she wants a good duelist because her brother is.

He also lies because he's trying to protect Serenity from the reality of who Joey really is: a kind of goofy guy who doesn't really manage to look cool all the time. Tristan doesn't understand that Serenity doesn't expect Joey to look cool, that's not why Joey is her hero. He assumes he knows what she wants, and he's dead wrong. The worst part is, even after she calls him out on the lying, he continues trying to protect her, from Duke, behind her back. As Duke points out, Tristan really doesn't know what Serenity wants, he's just being possessive.

So yeah, when it comes to Serenity, Tristan lies to her, assumes too much, and acts way more possessive than he has the right to (the girl never ONCE said she liked him like that), and I have to admit I don't care for that. (I'd prefer to see him with a woman who will tell him in no uncertain terms what she wants out of him, see how he likes THAT. XD) When it came to Miho in the manga, he was far too eager to have Yugi write the love letter he was going to give her, once again showing that he just doesn't seem to think he's good enough to win a girl on his own.

Despite this, he does at least want very earnestly to fill the role of "shining knight" for someone, and if he just were himself, Tristan wouldn't be half bad at it. As I noted, he's very capable and responsible. He can take on two to five thugs alone (as long as he doesn't have to worry about innocent bystanders) and can still grin while he's doing it, a prerequisite for many young women when it comes to "my hero."

I don't tend to think he's a very good judge of character, though. He assumes, because she is a quiet and polite girl, that Serenity is "sweet Serenity," pure and innocent and easily broken (a lot of fans make the same mistake), but she's actually canny, surprisingly resilient, and likes the idea of nobody being able to push her around. He mistrusts Mai as a femme fatale for much longer than the other characters do, when Mai is actually sensitive, good, and sad. In other words, Tristan takes people at face value, and has a hard time getting past that first impression, even with his friends.

Another sign of his "rescuer" trait is the fact that he's the one who trotted all over Pegasus's castle looking for soulless bodies. He's also the one who dragged Bakura and Téa all over selfsame castle trying to prove that Pegasus was cheating, he's the one who offered to carry Bakura after Yugi had to blast him with Slifer, he's the one who tried to shake Joey out of a coma during Battle City, and he's the one who carried Joey when Joey lost his soul during Waking the Dragons. Tristan is proactive, and he's not only unafraid to shoulder the burden of an injured friend, he's eager. He's also apparently got some wisdom with regards to how to do that, since you'll notice that he almost always resorts to fireman's carry, which is considered the "proper" way to carry another person.

Of course I haven't really mentioned the fact that Tristan is kind of a pervert and used to pick on people. They're part of his character, yes, and yet somehow they feel kind of incidental; he'll read dirty magazines and appreciates Serenity's body because he's a man, he used to pick on Yugi mainly because he used to be angry all the time and it was a way to vent his frustration at the world.

And hey, also because Joey did it. He's something of a follower, at least when Joey is concerned. It's not that he can't think for himself (because obviously he can) it's that it's so easy to get caught up with whatever Joey wants to do. Often when Joey's not around, Tristan is much calmer, and steps up as the point man, even when Yugi's there (especially when a situation requires a certain kind of action.) Tristan's parents probably see Joey as a bad influence on him, which admittedly Joey sort of is. XD (If there's any reason at all that Tristan fights with his parents, this is it.) Tristan is a second-in-command sort; he can lead, but if his chosen leader's there, he does what the leader wants, even when he's trying to be a voice of reason.

(At one point in the manga, Joey decides he needs new shoes-- and not just new shoes, super special awesome air pump sneakers. Tristan complains through the entire story that this is just ridiculous, and even offers Joey a pair of his own shoes, but he still goes with him to the crazy scorpion shoe store, is still willing to beat the crap out of the guys that steal the shoes later, and doesn't exactly try to stop Joey from stomping his foot into a sneaker that allegedly has a scorpion in it. Joey, by the way, continues to wear these shoes for pretty much the entire rest of the series.)

Tristan is only a piece of the unit that makes up Yugi's core group of friends, and he's a piece that tends to fade into the larger picture. But if he wasn't there, the series would sorely miss him, and the support, reason, and stability he adds to the cast.

Final Distillation:
Tristan is capable and responsible.
He's Joey's wingman, and therefore picks up any slack in the group.
He also keeps the other characters on a straighter course. He's stable.
Tristan is a "rescuer." His taste in women reflects this.
He tends to take people at face value.
He gets caught up in Joey's charisma very easily.
Tristan is proactive.

As always, comments can be made either to the DeviantArt journal, here, or through our Gmail, I'd be happy to hear them.

XD Old dubmerch is fun

So the other day Mom brought home some elderly Yugioh magazines and such (circa Pyramid of Light) that she found free/cheap at a yardsale, and I have a few comments in reaction to them:

1. I never knew that Scholastic printed a "guide" to Yu-Gi-Oh using the overused official art and barely-informative blurbs. I was horribly amused. (Kid brother William ended up with it, and he's thrilled.)

2. Johnny Depp as Marik. My brain just about exploded trying to imagine him in one of those belly shirts, pretending to be fourteen. It didn't help that Beckett readers also voted the Rock to be Odion. I seem to recall hearing something about this back when it happened. Other trials on my sanity included Jim Carrey as Joey and some random homely child actor as Yugi (keep in mind he would have had to also play Atem. And, you know, the kid was like ten, and Yugi is older than Marik. Who would be Johnny Depp.) Oh yeah, and Hillary Duff as Mai. They VOTED for these. Never leave casting to a bunch of pre-teens.

3. Hayden Christiansen as Bakura? Hayden is six foot two. Bakura is shorter than Joey-- who is something like five foot nine.

4. Obelisk the Tormentor versus any critter in any other number based card game: Depends on how easy it is to feed Obelisk. DUH. XD

5. I was reminded very strongly as to why I quit buying these things shortly after starting. On the one hand, nice little art gallery. On the other... Yeah. I was never twelve when I watched this show.

On a related note, we were watching Duelist Kingdom episodes again recently, and I suddenly realized for the first time that Hitotsume Giant is wearing shadow pants, even in the dub. Holy cheese.